


Good Decisions

by charlottesometimes



Series: Heads and Tails Verse [1]
Category: Political Animals
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Drug Addiction, Gen, Subtly fucked-up family dynamics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-22
Updated: 2015-02-22
Packaged: 2018-03-14 15:59:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3416777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/charlottesometimes/pseuds/charlottesometimes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>TJ's 27 years old, and he's so, so close to being stable and okay for the first time since he was a tiny little kid. He's living in Chicago, three hours from where his family lives in the Governer's Estate in Springfield, Illinois. He's back in school, making A's, and he has sober friends. </p><p>Now the family wants him to quit his life, and move into the campaign tour bus with them while Mama runs for the Democratic nomination. </p><p>Can it really be that hard to tell them, "No"?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Good Decisions

**Author's Note:**

> This is set in 2009, when in canon Elaine is still the Governor of Illinois, which means she and the family live in Springfield (the capitol of Illinois). She's gearing up for the presidential primary run she loses in the first episode to Garcetti. 
> 
> Side note. In this fic, there's mention and a brief appearance from a sober friend of TJ's named Clint. Yes, I do indeed mean for this to be an imported, AU version of Clint Barton. I'm all about importing AU versions of MCU characters into TJ's world. 
> 
> Work is unbetad, so mistakes are mine.

Why had it felt, when TJ reached Clint's front door and turned around for a look back over the Chicago apartment that afternoon, like he might be seeing that lived-in, sunlit place for the last time?

That's what he asks himself as he rings the doorbell of his parent's lovely, spacious Springfield home three hours later, with a feeling like he's just dived into water that's much deeper than he thought it was. 

Clint's pleather couch with three ass-indentations lined up in a row had seemed to accuse him of something, as he departed. His ass sat in rightmost indentation yesterday while they all played Mario Kart, a gaggle of addicts all clean and sober and laughing. That already feels like a good memory, and maybe that's what Clint's couch was trying to say.

TJ jerks his shirt cuffs down below his jacket sleeves and shoves his fingers through his hair as he waits for someone to get the door so he can get on with this “family dinner,” and the fight Bud's brought him here to have. A fight TJ's got to win, if he's ever going to feel decent in his entire life. 

He thinks he hears something from inside the house. Is someone moving in the foyer, behind the front door's warped and colored glass? He isn't sure. It could be his family, it could be the TV, it could be a reflection of the state police stationed behind him, in the front yard. It could be his imagination. Whatever it is, it doesn't look like just one person. For a second, he feels like a legion is coming for him.

His family would think Mario Kart is a waste of time. Something for kids. And, maybe it is. But plenty of things waste time, and at least being around his new friends feels good both while it's happening, and after it's over. At least it doesn't feel like razor blades in his skull. 

So the fam can shove it up their asses, really. Really. 

He can do this. He can. He made a decision a long time ago that if it came to this, if they asked him to drop his new life and travel with them on the campaign primary trial, he would simply open up his mouth up and say, "No." 

It's simple, like Clint and his therapist said: The campaign trail means stress of the kind TJ can't take, which means drugs and drinking, which means arrests, unsafe sex, STD tests every month, antibiotics, hangovers, coke and E crashes so dark he contemplates suicide, shame and guilt when the family sees any of this happening, exhaustion, maybe a car accident or two, running in circles and circles and circles, never changing as a person, just accumulating a criminal record and waiting for the day he crosses some imaginary boundary that ends with him dead or in prison. 

He'd rather stay in his clean new apartment and hang with his clean new friends. It's time for the era of good decisions. 

So he'll tell them just, "No." 

Not, "Fuck you so hard they've got to invent a new word for it, peace, I'm outtie," which is what he *wants* to say. 

But still, "No."

Yet as he stands on the porch a little firework goes off in the back of his head, a firework he's learned to spot: A craving. He wants a drink. There's a liquor cabinet in the basement game room that will probably be left unattended. He could say he's going down there to get his copy of "Risk." He'd left it here.

Fuck. He's making a *plan*. He hasn't had a drink or a drug in five months, and he'd started to develop some armor. His armor's come off somewhere in the drive between Clint's and Mama's. Fuck, fuck, where did it--

The door opens, and Elaine stands in front of him smiling. "Tommy." She steps forward, and he can't stop himself from not only moving into the hug, but from enjoying it. He holds on a little longer than a hug should last, but that's a habit of his, so Mama doesn't notice. She smells of Nana's perfume and sweat, with something sweet and metallic underneath. Maybe it's her necklace. 

TJ feels like he's wandered unarmed into a dry, pitch-black cave during a monsoon. He never did learn to swim, but it's damn dark in here. 

They break apart and she looks him over. He does his best not to flinch and thinks of the liquor cabinet.

"You look good," she says finally. "Thank you for coming."

TJ wants to say, "Of course," but knows he should say, "What choice did I have, really?", and doesn't know how to find the middle ground.

He opens his mouth and what comes out is, "Yeah."

Mama frowns a little, but says, "Did you have any trouble with the directions?"

"GPS," TJ shrugs.

"Was there much traffic coming into town?"

"Nope. Sunday afternoon." He shrugs again and smiles, and he can feel that the smile is brilliant. Mama smiles back, maybe appeased.

"Good," she says.

"Mmhm."

Mama shuffles her feet a little, nervous in the way that only TJ ever seems to make her. Like he must be from a different world, since the truth is Mama's great with just about everybody from this one. "Well," she says. "Come inside. Everyone's in the yard."

TJ nods.

It's bright in the foyer and living room, high-watt yellow bulbs in everything. They pass the red leather couches that Mama loves so much, the ones that meant TJ could never get a dog while he lived here because it might mess them up. Even though he'd done some thinking, and believed a dog might help him stay clean.

He looks away from the couches. They're cherry-red and look damn good in photographs. TJ also knows, from experience, that he, Doug, Bud, Mama, and Nana all look damn good, too, sitting on them in photographs, wearing warm earth-tones (TJ's suggestion).

One photo in particular he can see in his mind's eye. How did he feel, he tries to remember, when that photo for "More" magazine was taken? Was he high?

He can't recall. It doesn't matter.

Through the bay windows, in the backyard that overlooks an overpass, Doug, Laura, Nana, and Bud have mustered. They're talking and gesturing with that familiar mixture of anger and glee that TJ knows for a fact means the topic is politics. The rhythms of Doug's hand movements and the shakes of his head lull TJ like a cradle song. He rubs his eyes and shakes himself, and thinks of soldiers in foxholes who pray. 

"TJ, you shit!" Nana says when he emerges onto the porch.

"Ey, Thomas Jefferson!" Doug says at the same time.

"Boy," Bud adds, coming to clap him on the back.

TJ doesn't think he's ever been sober before when he faced something so important having to do with the clan. He feels the exposure like a cutting wind.

"Hey everybody," he says anyway. "Laura." Doug's girlfriend waves. "It's *nice* out here. Did Mama hire a decorator to redo it?"

"Yeah, a little girl named Anne," Bud supplies, grinning like a shark. "Real ... professional."

"Right," TJ laughs, hoping to close *that* subject before it opens and feeling ashamed for even noticing the grin.

"Well give me a kiss!" Nana says when he hugs her--smells of perfume and rum--and pulls away. He leans back down and lays his lips against her cheek.

"That's better."

"Want a drink or something?" Doug asks. TJ sits down at the glass and metal porch table, chair legs scraping hard wood. He pulls his sleeves down again. He'd pressed this black button-down for the occasion, but the drive from Chicago has probably wrinkled it, he thinks. He leaves his jacket on.

"I'm okay," TJ says. His hair, in the sun-glazed bay windows, still looks good.

Doug nods and turns back to Bud as Elaine emerges from the house carrying a caterer's tray of vegetables, dips, olives, and grapes.

"You look good," Nana says, sliding into the chair beside him. Unknowingly echoing Mama, like that's the only thing there could possibly be to say to a healthy, sober TJ appearing in the house five months after his last arrest for possession. The thought makes TJ think of the basement cabinet, again; he wishes idly his straight-A semester or how well he feels now days when he wakes up in the morning could be converted into a hair style or a complexion, since that seems to be all they can notice or care about when it comes to how he's doing.

"Yeah," TJ says, voice quiet enough to stay between them, "and I haven't been in even one tabloid article in four months. How 'bout that? Bet people around the Governor's Estate loved that."

"I wouldn't know if you were," Margaret says, waving her high-ball glass. "I don't read any of that stuff anyway."

But I *wasn't*, TJ wants to say. Instead he nods.

"You know why you're here, don't you?"

"Because my family missed me?" TJ asks, lowering himself back into the deep chair and crossing his arms right across his chest.

"Because your mother assumed you were out there in Chicago killing yourself, more like it," Nana says. "I told her you've spent almost 15 years in a constant state of debauchery and that it hadn't killed you yet, so there's no need to worry, but of course, she didn't appreciate that."

The impulse to throw something back at her like, "And your 10 am Bloody Marry, luncheon screw drivers, afternoon mint julips, dinner wine, and evening liqueurs, does she worry about that?" 

But he doesn't. He would, if he was high. But he's not high, so he doesn't know *what* to say.

"Well, I know it's tough to believe, but I actually haven't lied to you guys once in the updates I send," he tries. Something about that nags at him so he adds, “Tuition's not going to waste this time,” with a smile. 

"Mm," Nana says. "Doesn't matter. I, for one, did actually miss you. You know," she leans closer to TJ, and TJ moves closer in, too, "I think Dougie and Laura are on the rocks?"

It takes TJ a second to catch up with Nana's words because he's stuck on "Doesn't matter," floundering on the phrase like an angry deep sea fish on a line. Because it does matter. Doesn't it matter? Doesn't it matter he's sober five months? But pressing the point will almost certainly just convince her, and anyone else half-listening, that he's trying to hard-sell a lie. So he swallows the hook and stops floundering.

"Uh," he says, "why?"

"Bottom line, she's not into indentured servitude for Elaine Barrish-Hammond," Nana says. She sips her drink. It is a rum drink; TJ can smell it. He thinks about the basement, then tries to think of anything else.

"Well," he says. "Dougie is definitely into indentured servitude, so I can see how that'd be a problem."

"Exactly," Nana nods. "If I didn't hate the bitch, I'd tell her to get out while she can. Dougie hasn't proposed yet, but, I bet you anything he's thinking about it."

"An engaged son," TJ agrees. "Shows how unapproachably stable Mama's family really is." He smiles. "Meanwhile the other son is distractingly charming and tragically gay, which means he's commendable just for soldiering on, and he has great hair, so everything's rad, right?"

"You got it." Nana moves her drink toward TJ, as in a toast, then frowns. "Why don't you have a drink?"

"I mean." TJ swallows. If he points out that he's only drinking soda or juice these days, he thinks, she might argue with him. "I'll go get something. Be right back."

He digs in the fridge and finds a Shasta, and returns to the porch, feeling pardoned. Got through that.

Mama and Bud are talking with their heads nearly touching on the far side of the porch as TJ retakes his seat. Their eyes both cut to his general area, and he feels pinned.

"Garcetti's a born liar," Laura is saying to Doug and Margaret. "We can't afford dishonesty in America right now. Shaw's an idiot, but at least he's always honest."

"Hey, lady, I'm with you," Nana says. "But Elaine will beat him. She doesn't look it, but she's meaner." TJ knows Nana doesn't really believe that.

Laura looks out at the overpass. TJ does his best not to catch her eye. She's wearing the necklace Doug bought her, which TJ picked out, after Doug literally walked out on her over an argument a lot like this one, about whether Elaine could win the primary and whether it was worth years of their lives to try. At least she's wearing the thing, even if it's hers for a stupid reason. The day TJ understands how Doug can walk out on sex, love, and companionship over something like that is the day he's become someone else. As he is, it will never compute. There's something so idealistic and stubborn and noble about it, TJ wants to puke.

He thinks about complimenting her on the necklace--she doesn't know he picked it out--just to be an asshole.

Instead he says, "If we keep talking politics I'm going to have to go get some ear plugs or some ether, so maybe Dougie could just tell us all about his new soft ball team?", and he smiles.

Nana pats his knee under the table and Doug ducks his head as Laura lets out a peel of laughter.

"You should have *heard* him the day after his first game!" she says.

"Shut up," Doug puts in, but he's smiling. TJ winks at him.

"'Is it supposed to hurt this much?'" Laura says, nailing Doug's I'm-still-so-reasonable-even-if-I'm-overreacting tone perfectly. "'I just mean, maybe I should see a doctor. I don't think it's supposed to burn like this.'"

"I definitely tore something," Doug says. "It healed, but it definitely happened."

"Considering you hadn't really exercised in your life before," TJ says, "I can see how soreness came as a shock."

"Oh, don't exaggerate, son," Bud says. He and Mama move toward the table and take seats. TJ angles his chair away from them. "He'd exercised--against his will, mind you--at least once before. 'Member, we got him on that hiking trail just before we moved into the House?" The White House, he means.

TJ looks down and away from Bud. Does he remember, like TJ does, that that hike was the *last* hike they ever went on together? "Yeah," TJ says. "That's true. My bad, Douglas. You shoulda been prepared from your extensive experience hiking once when you were eight."

Laura laughs again. Mama is beaming down the table at him, and he doesn't know why or what it means or what he might do to change it by accident, and he feels caught in a search light. He thinks of the basement.

A caterer's assistant comes out onto the porch and there's not much talk as she serves salmon and mushroom risotto, and pours water into glasses. TJ's hungry, he realizes, which is something that happens now that he's clean. He wonders whether anyone will notice if he actually finishes his food, and whether them noticing will make him uncomfortable. He's not sure.

Bud and Mama look away from each other as the pretty assistant serves Bud, her full breast brushing his arm as she leans from behind him (had it brushed anybody else?), and TJ thinks of all their whispered fights. He wonders again if he really knows these people. He can't know them well enough to be sure he can win the fight he's here to have. They are unknowable. There's a battle on, but he feels like it's too dark for him to see the terrain. 

Doug looks ill when TJ glances at him, so he knows he saw the boob-brush too. Their eyes catch, and for a second TJ feels again like he can do what he came here to do. Just say, No. Open his mouth, and say the word.

They eat and make small talk--the redesigned back porch, Bud's upcoming book release ("Man of the White House"), Laura's sister's baby. TJ jokes and eats his food. No one notices he's eating with the appetite he's only had back since he got clean. He is, it turns out, relieved by that.

It's not so bad, eating and joking and making small talk. His muscles relax as he lets light conversation carry him away from dwelling on how quiet Mama is, and how caustic Nana's words for her daughter are every time she opens her mouth, on how carefully no one has yet mentioned TJ's participation in the campaign. 

But maybe he lets his guard down too far, so far Mama can tell he's relaxed now, because she sets a hand on Bud's wrist.

A lull in the talk comes a moment later, and Bud says, "So TJ. You let your apartment managers know when you'll be gone yet? The first stump's at some college, and you know how the kids love ya. We don't want you to miss that one."

TJ has already been informed of the early campaign schedule. Bud knows that.

The moment he's imagined could go only one way is here, and he ought to be saying: "I'm not going anywhere."

"I--" TJ says. "I'll be there. In St. Louis. On time. Don't worry." He looks down at his salmon.

He can buy a plane ticket. He can. It'll work: Fly out to the events where he'll be the most useful.

"Well of course you will," Bud says. "You'll be on the bus. Unless we leave you in a bathroom at a rest stop again."

Doug and Nana give weak laughs. But it's not really a funny memory, from Mama's first run for the governorship: TJ'd been left in the bathroom because he'd been in there twenty minutes, so they'd forgotten about him.

He'd been doing lines. With some trucker with nice eyes. TJ's queasy thinking about it, about how he ended up giving the guy his mouth, and the trucker had run his fingers through his hair so tenderly, a touch he can still feel; about how after that he'd waited (and stayed high to deal with the anxiety) for the full month you need to get tested for HIV after possible exposure (for the maybe fifteenth time in his life) because the guy had zipped up with a, "Oh hey by the way, I'm infected."

"I know there are a bunch of colleges and other stuff on there you guys want me to do," he says, suddenly aware that he's speaking from a script he wrote for this moment in the back of his mind without knowing it. A script for concession and compromise. Which is not good news. He feels weightless but out of breath, like he's in a rip tide. "But it's so spaced out. I could just ... fly out and meet you guys for that stuff. Planes exist, you know. They're a thing."

"We thought of that," Mama puts in. "It's a good idea." She smiles that almost-bright-enough smile, the one that makes TJ shudder because from a distance even he can believe it. It makes him wonder sometimes whether falsity is, for some people, another form of sincerity.

"You know that won't work, son," Bud says.

"I won't always have somebody to go get you at the airport," Doug supplies.

"And what if something went wrong with the flight?" Mama asks.

"C'mon, son," Bud says, light as a feather, forking risotto and salmon together into his mouth and chewing while he speaks. "You wouldn't deny the nation it's flamboyant young hero, would you?"

He gives TJ that smile that might be fond, but might be mocking. TJ's never figured out which. But it always comes with the specific memory of telling Bud he wanted to be a concert pianist, when he was 11, and he hates it.

Bud's words, though, penetrate the feeling like his blanket's been ripped away in the early morning. He is, he knows in his bones as well as he knows anything, a lot of people's "flamboyant" fucking "hero." First openly gay individual to reside officially in the White House. What's the number again, on how many people have told him they came out because of him? A hundred sixteen? That's just who got close enough to talk to him. 

He knows it, and he'd been prepared not to give a shit. 

But he gives a shit. Right? Is that what this is? 

This is all so familiar feeling. How do you fight it?

Because what they really mean isn't so much, it's so important for the gays that you be there to rep them, why risk it? That's what they're playing at, but it ain't what they mean.

What they mean is, What if you get wasted and miss your flight? What if you lose your phone at some guy's apartment and can't remember where it is, and you don't even call and let them know what happened, and why you don't show up? What if you, in Chicago while we're nowhere near there, pass out in the booth at a club and pictures of your drunk, out of control ass end up online while Mama's trying to prove she can take care of the nation?

And there aren't good answers for any of those questions. No answers, promises, or reassurances anyone at this table would believe. Least of all TJ. Five months sober's nothing compared to fourteen years of consistent abuse.

He'd made no plan for how to get to, "No." Why hadn't he made a plan? Had he really believed that he could just open his mouth, and let his lips and tongue form the word? Or had he just wanted to tell himself he would say, "No," when he always knew he couldn't? How might he have prepared?

He thinks of Clint's lumpy, soft couch, and how he'd stretched out on it while Clint sprawled in the love seat, watching "The Ring" or "Paranormal Activity" for the natural flood of adrenaline. How Clint would usually put in a horror movie on nights when TJ came over quiet but not willing to talk about whatever was wrong. How it always helped, which is why Clint kept doing it.

He thinks of sitting on firm synthetic hotel couches after they've been shoved into the corner of the room to make space for folding card tables baring poling maps and thick binders of voter data. He thinks of how invisible you can be on those kinds of couches, at rest and put away and safe, and, what else matters? Certainly not whatever you've put in your bloodstream to pass the time there.

TJ actually already knows a guy at St. Louis University who pushes pills and coke. They'd met on Mama's second run for governor. If TJ breaks out his old phone, actually, he's got a web of contacts that can keep him going for most of this campaign. The campaign trail has, for him in recent years, been a warm, soft, queasy place.

"Do I have to give up the apartment?" he asks. He pushes salmon around his plate, and gives up, setting his fork down carefully. "I'd wanna move back to Chicago after the campaign. I--you know--have a life there now. Believe it or not."

"It's a long haul to 'after the campaign,'" Bud says. "But sure. If that's your terms. We'll keep it. And if you end up decidin' to move to DC with the family after your Mom gets elected President, which you're more'n welcome to do, we can hire movers to bring your stuff after us."

He smiles over at Elaine, who smiles back.

TJ feels the letting-go of making a good decision.

What's a semester of all A's, a handful of new sober friends, and an apartment in Chicago mean, really, in the face of a Presidential campaign? In the face of Doug's dreams? What had he been thinking? If he's ever going to deserve the help they give him and the money they pay to support his wasted ass, the trip to rehab, and the simple fact they haven't disowned him yet, he's got to keep doing what he can do for them: Show up at the events, and be young, attractive, and charmingly homosexual. He's good at that. Always has been. He might end up in tabloids on his own time, but he doesn't miss performances. He wonders if they realize that: That he's never not showed up when they asked him to, and he's always looked his best when he got there. His absolute fucking best.

He nods. "I'm gonna take a piss," he says, and stands up.

"TJ," Mama calls after him. He turns to meet her eye, but doesn't smile. "Thank you, baby."

He does smile then, in spite of himself, and goes into the house.

He heads toward the bathroom, running his fingers along the red couches. But when no one outside is looking, he takes the stairs to the basement rather than opening the bathroom door.

It's cool and dim down there, the old dark green and brown L-shaped couch he remembers from the small house in the North Carolina hills they'd often escaped to during his first eight years of life running along two walls. A large, oak hutch dominates another wall, and this he opens. He feels calm.

Whiskey or vodka? He prefers whiskey but vodka is odorless. That's important.

He doesn't know why, but he goes with whiskey. Takes it to the couch, sits down--couch smells of cigarettes, old upholstery, and crunchy fall leaves, and a memory seizes TJ: Collapsing onto it's familiar cushions, covered in rain-soaked soil from the land around that old North Carolina house, laughing with Dad about the lost tourists they'd found in the wood and escorted to safety, Dad letting TJ take the lead. TJ'd had a splinter in one hand from his rough walking stick, but the day had been too good to say anything about it. He would take it out himself later in the bathroom, somehow. It hurt for now, but it was worth the laughter as they went back over the details of their adventure, his Dad proud of how well he knew the land, how tough he was out there, how he could do anything Dad asked him to. 

TJ twists the cap off the whiskey and drinks until he gags on it. When he's done and he can breath again, his throat and his breath taste foul and dry like a hangover, and it all rushes back: wrestling with this every night, the want to drink and the knowledge he shouldn't. He wants a bump so he doesn't have to think about the whiskey, and that might be an insane fucking thought, but it ain't the first time he's had it. 

He lets his gag reflex retreat, then drinks to gagging a second time, and caps the bottle. Mild numb euphoria settles over him, and he knows he's made a good decision in coming down here.

He tucks the bottle behind a plant on the front porch so he can retrieve it for the ride home when he leaves, goes back into the living room, and calls Clint.

"Hey, Mr. President's Son," Clint answers. "How'd it go?"

TJ smiles and lets the twin tides of alcohol and a good friend's voice wash over him, trying to memorize the feeling of this particular combination drug: A brand new one, for him, and one that's sure to soon be gone.

"Hi, Clint, baby, how's it going?"

There's a beat of silence on the end of the line. Outside, TJ hears Laura's voice rising; apparently in his absence, the politics have started up again.

"... You sound drunk," Clint says.

"I'm probably just tipsy."

"I. I can come get you. I don't mind."

"It's three and a half hours. Don't be dumb."

"Hah. I'll do my best." The sound of Clint sitting down, or settling in, on his lumpy couch. "So what's up? What happened?"

TJ rubs the smooth red leather of the cushion beneath him. It's cool to the touch. "I'm going."

"I figured," Clint says. "From the drinking. But you don't have to do this, TJ. You never did."

"Mm."

"You *don't*."

"M."

"Do you want me to tell you all about how you don't?"

TJ looks out the window. He can't take this. It's so ... mired. Everything about this day. Mired. Mired in quicksand or mud. And what's the use of combing through mud. Why get your hands that dirty when his head feels wiped clean again for the first time in forever. "...No," he says.

"I didn't think so."

A part of TJ wants to say, "What's that supposed to mean?"

But he's tired and buzzed. And the buzz is good.

"I'll talk to you later," he says.

"Yeah," Clint says. He sounds as tired as TJ is. "Bye, TJ."

"Bye."

TJ drinks most of the bottle before nightfall and sleeps on the cherry red couch.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is part of a verse I have in my head, and there will probably be more in that verse that I post later on. I've been dwelling in this verse for months but only now have I decided to brave posting some of it. 
> 
> Please feel free to leave a comment, no matter what it says, any comment at all, even if it doesn't seem relevant. Talking about TJ Hammond and Political Animals is my lifeblood, you see.
> 
> Also if you liked this and you wanted to post this on Tumblr or something I'd love you and send you positive karmic vibes forever. It's hard to get reads in the tiny PA fandom.


End file.
